Mom Ears Come Standard On My Model

I'm not exactly sure what it is that makes parents able to hear their child sniffle from across the house, cough from their neighbor's backyard and catch the soft intake of breath that precludes a nice big crying fit. My guess is its a delicious cocktail of biology; genetics with a little natural instinct thrown in to ensure the continuation of the species. However, I'm beginning to think that there's also quite a bit of learned behavior thrown in there. I know I don't have children yet but have cared for them long enough to pick up the first whimper that says they're waking up from a nap or the first breath through a rapidly stuffing nose that heralds the arrival of a cold. Since I'm not sleep deprived like their lucky parents are, it's even easier to pick up on their cues. I thought this was a mostly human interaction, that it was natural to be attuned to the discomfort of tiny humans but it also appears to extend to furry babies as well.  Exhibit: Haji.

As you know, Haji has asthma and has been slightly prone to throwing up because of his coughing. Over just a few throw up incidents, the one in which he threw up on the bed, and another where we caught him making the hacking sound just in time to move him, I have developed surprisingly reliable mom ears for the  sound of my kitty feeling ill. This morning I woke up in the wee hours after hearing a single hack and was able to move Haji off the bed and onto something much more washable and give him some love. Thinking back, the same is true of the scratching sound he makes before he pees on my shoes/pants/purse but it's certainly not so reliable as to wake me from sleep to put him outside, probably because he's not actually ill, just incredibly annoying.

Fear has also trained me to hear the sound of Button's bell when she moves outside her designated area of the house. My sister's cat Devlin once led my indoor kitty Button underneath the house and left her paralyzed with fear in a corner for days while E and I drove home from Oregon in the middle of the night and then frantically searched the crawl space for her. It took us days to find her since she was in a part of the crawl space I couldn't fit into and I had peppered the neighborhood with missing posters by the time we were able to get her out. While I'm not sure if I'd hear her moving outside her space in my sleep, I can't go to sleep without making sure the baby gate to her room is closed.

What about you guys? Anyone else have mom ears come standard on their model?